A century ago, California had only one real city and a population that ranked 21st in the United States. Today, it is the nation's most populous state, and its economy is the seventh-largest in the world. This is the fourth of a seven-part series, the California Century, that follows this transformation.

PART FOUR: WARTIME

I was going to Balboa High School in 1941, and on December 7 I was walking to see my aunt, who lived on Cayuga Avenue. It was a Sunday morning, and people were talking back and forth across the street -- yelling something to each other. I didn't catch it. When I got there, my aunt told me the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. It was on the radio. I had never heard of Pearl Harbor.

After I graduated, I went to study photography at Samuel Gompers School, and then I got that letter from the president. I was drafted. I wanted a deferment to finish the class, but they wouldn't let me.

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So I took a jitney bus from Mission and Persia downtown to take the physical for the Army. But the jitney got a flat tire, and I was late. They made me sit around all day. But I finally took the physical and I was OK.

I went home and my father said, "Where have you been? The FBI was here to arrest you for desertion when you didn't show up." He was mad. But they straightened it out, and I went in the Army.

We had basic training in Atlantic City, and we went there by troop train. It was the most miserable train ride of my life. We went a zigzag route, all over the country, first one way, then another. No dining car; they made some boxcars into kitchens, and we ate with mess kits. No showers, either. Seven or eight days. We must have smelled pretty bad.

In Atlantic City they'd turned hotels into barracks, and we learned how to march on the Boardwalk.

I took the test for aviation cadet and was sent to Penn State College for courses in physics, aeronautics and meteorology. Then we went to school in Montgomery, Ala.

We flew PT-17 planes, the kind you see flying over the 49ers games. Crop duster planes. I could fly all right, but I couldn't land the plane.

So I washed out of there. They say they had 250,000 flying cadets in World War II and half washed out, but only people who were in it and know what you went through to get where you were know how it is when you wash out. There is a special pride they instill in you, and it is a terrible feeling.

They sent me to Denver, for armament school.They needed air crews. I hate weapons, I hate guns, but here I was learning how to put fuses in bombs and assemble and disassemble 20mm guns and weapons on planes.

I was a waist gunner. We learned the B-26 bomber equipment, then armament on the B-24, B-25 and B-17 bombers. They were all different.

We kept training. The military is like a dinosaur with a small brain and a long tail. It takes a long time for the message to get back to the end of the line.

One day, when we were training, flying from Florida over the Gulf of Mexico, we spotted a German submarine on the surface and bombed it. Sank it. But the sub fired and hit our nose gear, and we had to make a semi-crash landing. Our bombardier was killed.

Finally, in 1945, we went to Laredo, Texas, training for some special mission with the Navy on the B-17 bomber. We never knew what we were training for, but it was a fenced-off area. We heard rumors about the invasion of Japan.

They kept training me and training me until they ran out of war. VJ Day was August 15, the best birthday I ever had. I was 21. You know what they did? The CO of the base closed it off and opened the officers' club, the NCO club, anyplace there was beer. All free. We had the biggest party that ever was.

The war was over, we were grounded, flight pay ended. I went to the mess office and counted rations. That was my job. Went to Atlanta, then someplace up by Sacramento and got out there.

I came across the bay from Oakland on the ferry boat to San Francisco. I guess it had to be one of the greatest sights I've ever seen.

I had $500 in mustering-out pay, and I used the money to go into business, Oct. 12, 1946. Columbus Day. I opened a camera store on Mission in the Excelsior District. I didn't know anything about it, but I read books and taught myself.

Keane's bar next door took bets as to how long I could stay in business. They're gone now, and I was on Mission Street for 45 years. They called me the mayor of the Excelsior District.

I came to California in 1943. The shipyard people came to Louisiana offering $1.20 an hour to work in California. I'd worked for as little as 25 cents an hour, 50 cents an hour, and thinking I was doing pretty good. I had been the cashier at the Star Theater in Shreveport.

Had I ever seen a ship? I imagine I had not. I didn't even know what a ship looked like. But they were hiring, so we went.

We took the train. On this train, the two cars for colored people were full. So I sat on my suitcase in the aisle, all the way to California. Three days.

I ate from a paper bag because colored people couldn't go to the dining car. I had never been out of Louisiana, but my mother understood this and she made me sandwiches for the trip.

I still don't understand it. I could never allow myself to hate anybody or to consider anybody else inferior.

In Louisiana, I knew my place all the time. I expected it to be a whole lot different when I got to California. But it was a revelation. I never forgot. I'm still wondering: When it is my turn? When is it my turn?

They were hiring at the Marinship Yard (in Sausalito), but they told me I had to join the union to work as a welder, and then they told me, "We don't take colored people in the union."

So 500 of us stood in front of the gate, and said, "We're not going to work." And a judge in San Rafael said the union had to represent colored people. (Superior Court Judge Edward Baker ruled that discrimination was "against public policy of the state of California).

We lived in Marin City. We slept in shifts, eight people in the house. Some worked days and slept nights, and some worked nights and slept days. It goes to show what you can do when you have to.

I tell my granddaughters now: "Never say you can't do something. Never say you can't."

In Sausalito, colored people couldn't sit at the counter in the corner drugstore and drink a Coke with white people. You could buy it, but you had to go outside and drink it. In California!

I learned how to weld. I received an ABS (American Bureau of Shipping) welding certificate. We worked in the hold of the ships, down there where there was no fresh air. Asbestosis was the thing of that day. It affected your life. There was no cure.

After awhile, there was a reduction in force -- an RIF, they called it. We were the last hired and the first fired. So I went to the telephone company. They said they had all kinds of jobs. But when I went, the only job they had was a dishwasher.

You think a colored woman could walk right up and get a job as a telephone operator? Not a chance.

My husband was an army officer in the Chemical Corps, and we went to Europe, where he was stationed. We lived there, and my daughter, Ingrid, was born in France in 1956. She has dual citizenship.

I spent six years in Europe. I have a house in the Ingleside in San Francisco. I like the weather here, and I have lots of friends of all races. I'm an honorary member of the Filipino Democratic Club.

Now I do modeling. I was in a Macy's ad and I was in a big ad in Time Magazine.

I was an extra in "True Crime," the Clint Eastwood movie. I was in the scene in the Oakland Zoo, where Clint Eastwood runs through really fast pushing his baby in a kind of cart, and his baby falls out of the cart.

He said, "When I come by, I want you to look surprised." And after he did the scene, he called me over. I expected he'd want to do it over, but he said, "Ella, you did it exactly right."

I was driving with my mother after church, up Market Street near the Twin Peaks Tunnel on Dec. 7, 1941, listening to the New York Philharmonic on the radio. They broke in to say that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

I had gone to sea and had just come back from the Philippines on a transport ship. A civilian ship. I was a storekeeper. I'd gone to the University of Oregon, but left in April to go to sea. My professor sent me a final exam to take the job at sea. I'd been around boats all my life, so naturally I wanted to go to sea when I could.

When the balloon went up, I went in the Army. They drafted me in August 1942. We took basic training at Camp Roberts (in Monterey County) and one day, when we were marching across the railroad tracks, suddenly the northbound Daylight train came around the corner doing about 70.

We were all bunched up, all scrambling to get out of the way, breaking ranks, just moving. I'll never forget the look of horror in the fireman's eyes in the train's locomotive. But it didn't hit anybody. Afterward, the lieutenant told the sergeant to take over, and he sat under a tree, shaken.

I went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Ga. It was a three-month course, so I was a 90-day wonder. A good course, an excellent course. I got my commission as a second lieutenant in April 1943.

I was in the latter part of the Battle of the Bulge, the north shoulder of the Bulge. Bastogne was in the middle, and we were on the north.

Combat? Yeah, I saw some. It consisted mostly of terror, boredom and discomfort. I ran into a few firefights, moving across Germany. Once, though, I got in a backyard full of angry geese biting the hell out of me. Presumably enemy geese. I was rescued by a sergeant. War is hell.

My regiment, the 273rd Infantry Regiment, linked up with the Russians on the Elbe River. (This meant Germany was cut in two.) The war ended shortly thereafter.

Later, I was transferred to the 29th Division, and we were in Bremen, on the North Sea, to establish a seaport in the British zone of Germany.

Then I got command of a company. I was a first lieutenant. They were hard cases: one-third graduates of a disciplinary barracks, one-third people who had been court-martialed, one-third new people. Some of them were good soldiers, and they shaped up if given a fair shake.

I came back in 1946 and went to Cal. Studied geography. Berkeley was jammed, and the returning vets were very serious. It was unnerving for young college kids just starting out.

I got an M.A. and part of a Ph.D. The GI Bill was very good to me.

I stayed in the Army reserve; I stayed because I thought if there was another war, and something happened because of something I didn't do ... well, it was not flag-waving, but I thought I had to do it. Later, it became a job. I got out in '72 as a lieutenant colonel. I have good memories of the military, good feelings, but I don't miss it.

I spend a lot of time volunteering on the Liberty Ship Jeremiah O'Brien. (Sinnott is an able seaman.) It's a job I've enjoyed. I've worked on this ship for 19 years. A long time, a long time.